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General discussion

Help! Is my motherboard now a paperweight???!!!! Technical?

by bigdaddya Jul 10, 2006 11:52AM PDT

Hi,
I installed a different motherboard and cpu in my system, reactivated windows and the system booted up and ran fine. I ran a system information utility at corsairmemory or crucial memory, can't remember which and noticed that the system information said the front side bus was only operating at 200 MHz. I recalled a section of the bios that let you adjust this, so I went into the setup and set the frontside bus speed, which was listed as 200 Mhz to auto and the CAS latency to auto. I rebooted the system, which then started giving me quick flashes of the "windos has been stopped to prevent damage to your system . . ." but it flashed by too fast to read more. The system kept rebooting, so I went to the same place and set the FSB speed to 333 MHz since that was the speed listed on my memory sticks. I then rebooted the system which then claimed a bad CMOS checksum and started asking for a floppy or the motherboard setup cd rom. Not having a bios floppy, I put the motherboard system setup cd rom in the drive. The screen said it read the bios setup utility from the cd rom, the screen went black, it didn't even say the words "flashing the bios" like the manual said it should. Then the machine just sat there with the hard drive light running for about 5 - 10 minutes and then rebooted itself. Now it won't beep or boot or do anything. I can't access the bios, it won't read cd's, floppies, or its hard drives. I believe the bios is totally corrupted but all the methods Asus lists in the manual don't work because it won't read any type of disk. Does anybody know where to go from here or do I just chuck the motherboard on the garbage heap? Below are my system specs:
Here are the specs:

Motherboard Specifications

Model
Brand ASUS
Model P5VD1-X
Supported CPU
CPU Socket Type Socket T (LGA 775)
CPU Type Intel Pentium D/Pentium 4 HT/Celeron D
FSB 1066/800MHz
Supported CPU Technologies Hyper-Threading Technology
Chipsets
North Bridge VIA PT880 Ultra
South Bridge VIA VT8237R
Memory
Number of DDR Slots 4x 184pin DDR
DDR Standard DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Maximum Memory Supported 4GB 512 in dual channel mode installed
Dual Channel Supported Yes
Expansion Slots
AGP Slots 1x AGP 4X/8X Nvidia 6200 installed
PCI Express x16 1x PCI-E x16 (max x4 mode)
PCI Slots 3
Storage Devices
PATA 2 x ATA100 up to 4 Devices 2 hard drives installed
SATA 1.5 Gb/s 2
SATA RAID RAID 0/1
Onboard Video
Onboard Video No
Onboard Audio
Audio Chipset ADI AD1888 disabled with sound blaster live installed
Audio Channels 6 Channels
Onboard LAN
LAN Chipset Intel 82540EM
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
Rear Panel Ports
PS/2 2
COM 1
USB 4x USB 2.0
Onboard USB
Onboard USB 2x USB 2.0
Physical Spec
Form Factor ATX
Dimensions 12.0" x 9.6"
Features
Power Pin 24 Pin

CPU Specification:

Model
Brand Intel
Series Pentium 4


CPU Socket Type LGA 775


Multi-Core Single-Core


Operating Frequency 3.0GHz
FSB 800MHz
L1 Cache 12KB+16KB
L2 Cache 2MB
Process Type 90 nm
Hyper-Threading Support Yes

Multimedia Instruction MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3
Voltage 1.25-1.388V

Discussion is locked

6 Posts
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Try this. . .
by Coryphaeus Jul 10, 2006 9:42PM PDT

Power off, unplug the power cord, and remove the CMOS battery. Locate the CMOS/BIOS reset pins and short them. Let it sit for about a minute and short the pins again. Replace the battery and power back up.

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Also -
by WhyFi Jul 10, 2006 10:43PM PDT

After you've unplugged, hit the power button once to discharge any charge left.

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Thanks but tried that already with no change, also
by bigdaddya Jul 11, 2006 6:24AM PDT

Asus says on their website that it will cause damage if you shut the thing off or reboot while flashing the bios but hey, it was the machine's idea to reboot while flashing, not mine. I'm just trying to clean up the mess.
I have never had to reinstall windows when I install a new motherboard. Windows has always just booted fine the first time after installing the new board, detected all the new equipment and gone on its merry way, working AOK. The next time I boot, however, windows always asks to be reactivated, so I do and, presto, everything is working fine. I have a household network of 4 - 5 computers, depending on if I'm adding new hardware or upgrading something and all of them have been just fine with the above procedure, except maybe this problem one in this series of posts but since all the rest are working fine, I wonder if this is a windows problem at all, since the machine won't even post

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Re:
by WhyFi Jul 11, 2006 8:46AM PDT
''I wonder if this is a windows problem at all, since the machine won't even post.''

I know... that's why I titled the post ''when you get that board to post'' Sure, you can just do a repair, but there's a good chance that you'll experience system instability due to conflicts. It's always better to do a fresh install.

As far as your current problem, you probably changed something in the BIOS that you shouldn't have, and your rig isn't happy with you.

I would strip it down and put it back together, adding a piece at a time to see what you messed up. PSU and motherboard... then add CPU... then a stick of RAM... etc. etc. If it's the motherboard, maybe you can get a replacement CMOS chip.
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Thanks for the suggestions!!
by bigdaddya Jul 11, 2006 11:42AM PDT

I'm going to follow your advice and strip everything down and start from scratch. I called Asus bios department and they thought that the bios was indeed the problem. They figure the current bios chip is kaput. But they are sending me a new bios chip free! Well, with a shipping and handling charge of $5, that is. I figure if I install the new chip and follow the procedure you outlined the darn thing will work! I'll let you know the results as soon as the new chip arrives. Thanks again!

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When you do get the board to post -
by WhyFi Jul 10, 2006 10:51PM PDT

When you replace a motherboard, you have to reinstall Windows - you can't just leave it on the drive and expect it to work fine. Also, I wouldn't go changing anything in the BIOS until you really know what you're doing - let everything run stock for a while to break in. Go back in to the BIOS and set it to run at default, auto, SPD, whatever.

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